


The Walking Dads

by AsagiStilinski



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Kids, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Married Couple, Protective Stiles, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Sterek Bingo 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 13:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10832526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsagiStilinski/pseuds/AsagiStilinski
Summary: Stiles had learned that there were some people in his life who he could almost always count on to be enemies: Hunters, unidentified creatures wearing masks, Peter Hale... and PTA momsOrStiles gets some unsolicited parenting criticism that leaves him angry and uncertain of his choices





	The Walking Dads

**Author's Note:**

> There's a t-shirt for dog walkers that has "The Walking Dad" written across it covered in paw prints, thus how I got the name for the fic
> 
> A wile ago there was a debate on a TWD forum about letting kids watch The Walking Dead, the article that had started the debate was one of the stereotypical "PTA moms" types of things where it blasted everything about TWD for being wrong, overly violent, inspiring violence in real life, etc, and I just found it to be so utterly ridiculous, TWD *is* a show for adults and if you let your kids watch it that's not something you can blame the show for, with that being said, I've always believed in letting a child watch things as long as they don't cross their personal comfort borders, I was raised on horror from the time I was a toddler and never had a problem with it, but on the other hand, I had a close freind who couldn't watch anything even remotely scary without having chronic nightmares, so you know, let your kids figure out what makes them comfortable, but it's always something I personally get passionate about, when people judge parents over such petty things and act like it's the end of the world- and more importantly, act like it's any of their business, so I let out a little of my own frustration with this one

"Are you absolutely SURE you want to try this?"

"Daddy, I'm TRIPLE sure,"

Stiles gave a long, loud sigh and slowly shook his head as he stepped back and set the pool bag down on the nearest lawn chair

"Ok.. if you're absolutely sure," he replied with a bit of hesitation, reaching down and carefully pulling the Walking Dead shirt off of the little girl

"Just remember, if you feel unsafe-"

"I know I know, Papa's right there,"

"And don't swim too far,"

"I know, three feet only,"

"And-"

"DADDY! I _KNOW_!"

Stiles sighed again, trying to force himself to remember that letting go was part of parenting

(A part of parenting that he hated)

"Ok ok, go, be free,"

She didn't need to wait on extra permission, eagerly racing towards the edge of the pool where Derek and the other kids were

"Hey! No running!"

Ofcourse by the time he said anything she was practically already there

"Kids," he huffed playfully, folding up the t-shirt his daughter had been using as a cover-up and setting it inside the pool bag

"It's almost disgusting how fast they grow up," he added a second later, not necessarily sure if the women behind him were listening or not but deciding he may as well just talk anyway

"I mean I can't believe that we've only been doing this for a few years and yet we already have four kids, but considering the first two are twins I guess that's easier to swallow, and I mean, I know that it isn't exactly popular to have a bunch of kids these days but what can I say? My husband and I have found our calling,"

He swallowed, feeling achingly ignored as he finished laying out towels and unpacking snacks and doing all of the other parent-y things that you do when you go to the pool

"Is that... a Walking Dead shirt?"

Oh thank God finally

"Yeah! It is!" he beamed proudly, spinning on his heel to meet the eyes of the three women who were all sitting in some poorly constructed semi-circle behind him

"Do you let your daughter watch that show?"

He blinked

Was... was this really happening?

"Well I mean... yeah..."

"And how old is she?"

Stiles wanted to ask what business it was of her's, but he restrained himself, he didn't need to be causing trouble at the local pool, not considering that they wanted to teach the kids to swim anyway...

"She'll be seven next month,"

The look on the stranger's face SCREAMED of disapproval, and Stiles was just waiting to hear the comment he knew was coming next

"Don't you think that's a little too young to be exposed to that kind of violence?"

There it was

He wanted to scream "Lady she's a werewolf, her entire life is violent!" more than he wanted to live to see his next birthday

But again, he restrained himself, why scream when he can go home and curse her for the next hundred years?

(Because satisfaction, that's why!)

(And also because Derek most likely wouldn't LET Stiles curse her for the next hundred years over a petty comment)

"Violence is everywhere, turn on the news- not even six o'clock, but just the noon news- and there's horrendous violence, fairytales are violent, have you ever seen a Disney movie? WILDLY violent, I mean personally, The Good Dinosaur still makes me flinch in parts, besides, she's a few seasons behind, my husband and I don't let her watch anything that we haven't approved of, and if something happens that's just a little too squicky then we fast-forward or scene-skip it, it's safer than taking them to a random 'kid's movie' we haven't seen yet where they're exposed to stuff we don't want them exposed to yet, or again, turning on the news, atleast with The Walking Dead I can tell my daughter that it's fiction, I can't do that when she sees reports everywhere of serial killers and rapists and armed robbers and the like,"

Stiles was NOT going to let these freaking PTA moms make him feel guilty for doing nothing wrong

He occupied the moral high ground here!

"And shows like that are exactly WHY the world is as violent as it is today,"

That was it

That was the exact moment that Stiles lost his patience

"No, violence has always been stitched into every facet of society, it's just that it's finally becoming socially unacceptable to use it in real life, and the reason it's at such a peak now isn't because of TV shows, it's because of bigotry, self-entitlement, legal and political cra-"

_"Stiles,"_

Crap...

"Stiles, I need some help with these water wings, would you come here please?"

Bigger crap

Derek was using his strict, dominant, "If you argue with me now you're going to pay for it later" voice

Derek almost _never_ used that voice

Especially in _public_

That was usually an at-home only kind of voice

(Rather, an "in the bedroom only" kind of voice...)

(And besides, Stiles was usually the dominant party here, even more of a reason why the sudden vocal usage was throwing him off)

But...

He couldn't ignore his husband and he couldn't cause a scene so all he could do was glare, make an off-hand remark that he would rather raise a fighter than a damsel in distress, and stalked off so angry that Derek practically flinched

Wich, incidentally, was what caused him to loosen up

He never wanted to frighten Derek or make him uncomfortable, and even still, if Derek was uncomfortable, then the kids definitely were and that was even worse

None of them deserved his anger after all

So he forced himself to calm down, to breathe, to try to forget the conversation

And Derek, bless him, made sure the women were gone before suggesting they go home

Derek even bought them ice cream in some desperate attempt at trying to sooth the beast in Stiles' soul

There was just one little problem:

Stiles could cool down and relax in front of his family, but he couldn't just _forget_ the incident and move on that quickly

 

~+~

 

"I mean where does she get off!?"

Derek took a deep, long breath and hung his head, slumped his shoulders, and stared down at the baby in the bath tub in front of him

"Do I go around telling people how to parent their kids Derek? Do I? No, even the RIPE. MORONS. who do HORRIBLE things- if it's not illegal, I keep my mouth shut, wich is a pretty terrible thing honestly but what can I do? It isn't like me interfering is going to change anything, wich, HELLO-"

"Stiles..."

"I'm just saying Derek, what good does she think that's going to do? And what person just RANDOMLY gives out parenting advice to a total stranger? I mean EXCUSE me but-"

"Stiles...."

"-Who made you 'Mother Of The Year'? I bet those kids don't have a freaking clue what the real world is like, I bet she's practically raising them in a bubble, to never-"

"STILES!"

Finally, Stiles stopped, turning around and looking just about as annoyed as Derek felt

"Can I have my soap back please?" the werewolf asked flatly

Stiles blinked, really taking in the state of the room at that point and noticing with embarrassment that half the items in the room were floating- a side effect of a spark getting angry, really

Or atleast, not being able to CONTROL his anger

With a slight flush to his cheeks, the other looked down, chewing on his lip as everything slowly lowered into place- including the soap Derek had been using to clean their new son

"Why do you care?" he asked as he got back to work with the soap

"I mean, aren't you the one who always says that we should never care what other people think?"

"It just makes me mad," Stiles grumbled back, a pout clear on his face as he went back to cleaning out the medicine cabinet

"I know," Derek said softly, eyes downcast as he watched his husband with a deep frown

It hurt to see Stiles suffer like this, especially knowing that there was nothing he could do to help

But that was just the thing: What could Derek do?

It wasn't like he could somehow stop people from being judgemental or speaking their minds- trust him, if he could have, he would have by now

"You know, we have enough to deal with as far as parenting critiques go, having supernatural kids- a bunch of them, at that- homeschooling them, the attitude we take towards things like self-defense and authority figures... the LAST thing we need are critiques about our freaking TV choices too,"

"I know," Derek repeated quietly, because he did, really

He did know, he knew better than anyone- except maybe Stiles himself- how cruel people could be when it came to alternative parenting choices

And if anyone thought that some comments about a zombie TV show was the extent of it, they were dead wrong

(Pun only mildly intended)

"Sorry just... I just need to figure out a way to... to cool down about it I guess,"

"I understand,"

Because Derek did understand, honestly, he did

"I'm gonna... I'm gonna go bake, see if that helps,"

Derek gave a slow, quiet nod, keeping to himself and watching his husband disappear around the corner, wishing there was something he could do to help

 

~+~

 

"Daddy, can I help cut the tomatos?"

"Ah..."

Stiles glanced down at his daughter, a pensive look on his face

"I don't know Kara.... I don't know if you're really old enough to be handling sharp objects..."

"Pleaaaaseeee Daddy? I wanna help you cook," the little girl insisted with a pout, eyes big and round and blinking pitifully up at him

How the hell could Stiles resist that?

"Ok, compromise Sugarcube, if you can cut these into really little peices, you can use a plastic nife, ok?" he offered, grabbing a set of plastic utensils from the drawer behind him and handing it to her

God bless keeping picnic supplies on hand

"Ok!!" she chirped happily, grabbing for the tomato slices only for Stiles to stop her

"Hang on, hang on," he laughed, grabbing a second cutting board from the cabinet and setting it in front of her

"Now?"

"Yeah, go ahead," he promised, grabbing a chair from the kitchen table as Kara scooped up the tomato slices and set them on her cutting board

Stiles lifted her up easily, moving the chair into place and setting her on top of it

Secretly he was kind of stupidly proud of how easy it was for him to carry her around, even though Kara was almost seven now, Derek said it was spark strength, but Stiles insisted it came from "Years of hard manual labor as a father"

_"Stiles we've only had kids for three years,"_

_"But still!!"_

"Hey... Kara? You.. you aren't bothered by any of the stuff you watch on TV are you? It doesn't.. give you nightmares or.. make you upset or scare you or anything right?"

Kara looked up at him, a confused pout on her face as she tilted her head to the side

"No... why?"

"Well just.. because if it did, I'd want you to tell me, you know that don't you? I don't ever want you to hide that kind of thing from me just because you think it'd upset me or something alright? I really, really want you to tell me if anything ever ... well if you just don't like what you're watching,"

"I know," she said slowly, frowning a little deeper at him

"Daddy what's wrong?"

He should have known that he wouldn't get away with this

"Nothing Princess, really, I just-"

"Then how come you're asking all this stuff?"

So .. maybe what the woman at the pool had said really had gotten to him more than he wanted to admit...

He put his nife down, half chopped carrots aside, and turned towards his daughter

"I just don't want to force you into anything or make you feel like you have to like something because Papa and I like it, or that you can't tell me if something scares you, because you can, I just.... the world is such a scary place Kara... and you being a werewolf means that it's extra scary for you, you're going to have enough scary stuff to deal with when you get older as it is, I don't want to add on and make things worse, I don't want to cause you to be surrounded by scary stuff before you have to be,"

Kara frowned at him, her eyebrows pinching in confusion as she tilted her head

"I'm not scared of anything... is this 'cause of what that lady said to you?"

Right... sometimes he forgot his daughter had werewolf hearing...

"Well kind of .. but ... really, I just want to be sure that you aren't just watching scary movies because Papa and I watch scary movies..."

"I'm not," she shrugged back easily, returning her attention to slicing the tomatos into smaller peices

And it just seemed... simple

Really stupidly simple

Obviously Kara wasn't bothered by this stuff, so why should Stiles think that he was doing something wrong?

Kara was happy and well-adjusted- especially considering how hard her life had been recently, losing her family to hunters when she was only five-years-old...

And if a zombie show didn't bother her then a snoopy woman shouldn't bother Stiles

"Daddy, can we go back to the pool tommorrow?"

"Huh? Oh, sure Princess, anything you want,"

Kara smirked slightly, and although Stiles knew that should probably concern him, he couldn't quite say that it did

 

~+~

 

"You're on water wing duty today,"

Stiles pouted, staring up at Derek with a scrunched look on his face

"Awww..."

"Don't 'aww' at me, you're the one who said everything in our parenting would be 50/50, I had to be on water wing duty yesterday so now it's your turn,"

Sure Derek had a good point but still...

"Fine fine, water wings," Stiles grumbled back, setting things down on the lawn chair in front of him and starting to unload the water wings from the tote bag

He was in the process of blowing air into them when he heard Kara start talking

"Excuse me? Are you the same lady who was sitting here yesterday?"

Stiles choked, grip tightening enough on the water wing to blow the air from the plastic back into his lungs, unfortunately, he didn't have enough time to turn around and stop his daughter before she started in again

"You should be nice to him today, he's the best Daddy ever and it's ok if I like zombies because that's where my comfort level is, besides, Supergirl says that you should be nice to everyone, and my name is Kara like Supergirl so I'm saying it too- you should be nice to everyone, including my Daddy,"

Stiles... did not know what to do with that...

And judging by the look on the stranger's face, she didn't know what to do with that either

"Woahhh...." came the voices of the twins

"Kara IS Supergirl.." Sage muttered quietly

"Papa! Papa! Wawa wings!" Luna squealed, turning to tug on Derek's shirt

"I know, I know, Daddy will get them for you," Derek said softly, giving Stiles a look over his shoulder

"Right," Stiles said with a sigh, grabbing the waterwings and heading off towards the side of the pool with the girls in front of him

Derek went back to unloading the bags, balancing the baby on his hip as he did

"Are you not going to correct her?" the woman asked with an annoyed huff

Derek glanced up, eyebrows raising in confusion

"Well... it's not like she's wrong,"

Later that night, when Stiles found out that that was why the snooty woman had left the pool, he baked Derek's (and interestingly enough, also Kara's) favorite kind of cake for dessert


End file.
